Professor Larry Downes

Many receive advice, few profit by it. - Pubilius Syrus, Maxim 149

What is a consultant? One old joke that I remember from my early days as a consultant with what is now Accenture says that a consultant is someone who will borrow your watch to tell you what time it is. That seems as a good a starting point as any.

Many of you have had some experience in your earlier careers as consultants, whether as internal advisors, employees of a consultant firm or as contractors doing a variety of hourly or project-based work. Perhaps you have even come to SIMS with the hope of developing the kind of skills necessary to become or become a better consultant.

The purpose of this course is to help prepare each of you for the next stage of consulting. Recognizing that you begin at different levels of experience and have different goals and expectations of what you will be doing in the future, the course will focus on core skills every consultant-- indeed, every professional-- must continually work to improve. To the extent there will be a focus to the course, it will be at the industry level, specifically the information technology industries and the art of consulting as it applies in information systems and services.

We will spend each week working in groups on exercises, simulations, and role-playing activities aimed at identifying and improving your consulting skills.

School of Information Management and Systems INFOSYS 290-2

Course Dates: January 20 to May 10, 2005

Lecture Schedule: Thursday 12:00pm-2:00pm in 205 South Hall

Units: 2

Grading Option: Letter Grade only

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